Minutes of the AMA Committee General Meeting 22/08/20132016-03-28 14:18:15

Time: 15:00-16:00 Thursday, 22 August 2013

Location: China National Convention Center, Beijing, China

Chair of the meeting: Prof. Lei Cai (AMA Secretary General)

Present:

1

Prof. Xingzhong Liu

China (AMA President)

2

Prof. Tae Soo Lee

Korea (AMA Vice-Chairman)

3

Prof. Lei Cai

China (AMA Secretary General)

4

Prof. Oded Yarden

Israel (Country Representative)

5

Prof. Toru Okuda

Japan (Country Representative)

6

Prof. Chandralata Rahgukumar

India (Country Representative)

7

Prof. Sung-yuan Hsieh

Taiwan (Country Representative)

8

Prof. Larissa Vasilyeva

Russia (Country Representative)

9

Prof. Kevin Hyde

UK (Honorary Member)

10

Prof. Akira Suzuki

Japan (Honorary Member)

11

Dr. Adeline Ting

Malaysia (on behalf of Prof. Vikineswary)

Observer:

Prof. John Taylor

USA (IMA President)

Prof. Chengshu Wang

China (AMC2013 Organization Committee Chairman)

Dr. Na Jiang

China (Secretary of MSC)

Absent:

1

Peter Buchanan

Australasian (Country Representative)

2

Amin Uddin Mridha

Bangladesh (Country Representative)

3

Hean Vanhan

Cambodia (Country Representative)

4

Lilian LP Vrijmoed

HongKong (Country Representative)

5

Kartini Kramadibrata

Indonesia (Country Representative)

6

Rasoul Zare

Iran (Country Representative)

7

Azza A.AlMusallam

Kuwait (Country Representative)

8

Phengsintham Pheng

Laos (Country Representative)

9

Vikineswary Sabaratnam

Malaysia (Country Representative)

10

Tsetseg Baljinova

Mongolia (Country Representative)

11

Thida W. Ko Ko

Myanmar (Country Representative)

12

Mahesh K. Adhikari

Nepal (Country Representative)

13

Thomas Edison E. dela Cruz

Philippines (Country Representative)

14

A.H. Bahkali

Saudi Arabia (Country Representative)

15

Teck Koon Tan

Singapore (Country Representative)

16

Nimal Adikaram

Sri Lanka (Country Representative)

17

Kasem Soytong

Thailand (Country Representative)

18

Min Lam Duong

Vietnam (Country Representative)

1.1 Adoption of minutes

The “Minutes of the AMA Committee General Meeting” held in Incheon University, Korea on the August 2011, were passed with an amendment.

Amendment: Prof. Toru Okuda should be the Country Representative of Japan and Prof. Akria Suzuki from Japan should be the Honorary Member (past president).

1.2Greeting from IMA president

Prof. J. Taylor expressed his greeting to all committee members of the AMA. He said the AMC2013 was well organized with many fantastic talks, some of which will directly influence his future research. He also mentioned the tour to a mushroom factory organized by MSC, and the very interesting joint meeting between China and Japan on “Fungi in Traditional Fermented Food”. He encouraged AMA to keep improving AMC meeting and other activities.

1.3 Matters

1.3.1 AMA logo vote

Lei Cai introduced several designs for AMA logo. Design No.2 was chosen by the committee as AMA Logo, with 2 amendment advices:

lThe color of the design could be changed as needed.

lAdded “from” before “1977” on the logo design.

These advices were accepted by the committee.

1.3.2. AMA website

Lei Cai introduced the AMA new website: www.amcfungi.org which was built and launched after AMC 2011. The website hosts various AMA news and information, as well as information from member societies in Asia. Any suggestion and advice were welcomed.

1.3.3. AMA constitution

Lei Cai introduced the draft of AMA constitution and suggestions of the revision received from the committee members through emails. Four suggestions received from the committee members were discussed on the meeting.

Suggestion I was about the award committee member. The suggestion was decreasing one from non-Asia, adding one senior Asian mycologist (possibly the past awardees of the Distinguished Asian Mycologist Award). This suggestion was accepted by the committee.

Dr. Oded suggested inviting the winner to give a speech instead of cash as prize and the candidate could be nominated not only by societies but also from Asian countries without official society established. This suggestion was accepted by the committee.

Suggestion II was about the membership that should be opened to individuals.

Response from Lei Cai:

1) Taking individual members will bring in a lot of monetary affairs that AMA cannot handle.

2) There will not be many people interested in becoming an individual member as we can’t provide reasonable benefit. Providing deducted registration fee of AMC is possibly one but it seems less practical as AMC takes places in different countries and each organization committee are financially independent.

3) Other international Associations also do not have individual members, such as IMA. IMA statutes only say “The individual members of MMOs of the IMA are also members of the IMA.”

Suggestion III was on Article IV, for Changing “to motivate young mycologists to excel in industry driven research” to “to motivate young mycologists to excel in basic and applied research”. This suggestion was accepted by the committee.

Suggestion IV:

Revise article VII “i) A country representative is a person who was nominated by the member mycological society. If there is no mycological society in a particular country, society involving in mycology such as Microbiology and phytopathology could nominate a country representative”.

After discussion, the committee reached an agreement of revising article VII to “A country representative is a person who was nominated by the member mycological society. If there is no mycological society in a particular country, society with largest population of mycologist could nominate a country representative”.

1.3.4. Next AMC meeting

There was only one bid by India to host AMC 2015, so India would host AMC2015.

Prof. Chandralata Rahgukumar (organizing chairman of AMC2015) talked about three points of AMC2015

lSeed money of AMA conference: Dr. Lei Cai promised to transfer the seed money to India after AMC2013 as stipulated in the constitution.

lWho should be the Chairs of the sessions in AMC2015?

Prof. Xingzhong Liu suggested that, for the two chairs of each section, there could be one from local and another from invited international expert. Lei Cai further suggested that international advisory committee could help to suggest the international co-chairs.

Dr. Oded suggested setting the session with the consideration of numbers of received offer paper in different subjects.

lStatus of the IMFMS?

Prof. Sung-yuan Hsieh said the mycologists in the marine and freshwater mycology are few but they preferred to keep this session in AMC. Lei Cai said IMFMS originally proposed eight sessions, but in the end only four could be filled and each with few presentations. He suggested to keep IMFMS in AMC, but combine to one or two larger sessions in the next meeting.

1.4 Other issues raised by participants

lProf. Oded suggested uploading the newsletter to the website and sending to the country representative, and the website should have more information and be updated frequently to attract the readers.

lProf. Chandralata introduced the AMC2015 that will be held in Gora and suggest October as the conference time due to the more comfortable weather.